The folks at PC Advisor put on their horn-rimmed glasses to scope out the standalone Factions expansion to last year's popular subscription-free MMO, Guild Wars. Turns out they liked everything except the interface and ineffective AI henchmen.

For most quests you'll need to recruit other players to assist you. Unfortunately, the interface and chat system makes it difficult to make meaningful contact with fellow gamers, with the result that you'll spend a lot of time standing around just trying to form a group. You can recruit computer-controlled characters, but groups formed in this way are dull and not terribly effective.